A Mason & Dixon Companion

One

LATITUDES AND DEPARTURES

1

We open around Christmas 1786 at the Philadelphia home of the LeSpark family. From a winter snowball fight, the story moves inside, where, after a brief description of an interior room years since given over to [the children’s] carefree Assaults, the Reverend Wicks Cherrycoke is introduced. The Rev came to town for the funeral of Charles Mason, back in October, but he arrived too late and missed the burial. Now, in order to maintain his place in the home, he must keep the children amus’d through storytelling, something he begins to do in this episode, informing them about his past as a poster of anonymous political (even Revolutionary) messages and his subsequent exile. As the episode closes, Cherrycoke’s on the Seahorse, an armed ship that he hopes will take him east toward supernatural Guidance from Lamas old as time. But, alas, no such luck.

5.1 starr’d … Outbuildings An outbuilding is an ancillary part of an estate—for example, a stable, even a shed or garage. The structures’ presence here on the LeSpark estate indicates wealth. That the Snow-Balls are exploding against them (and against the sides of Cousins) sets a carefree atmosphere that contrasts with the Nation bickering itself into fragments we’ll find below.

5.2 Delaware The Delaware River. We’re near Philadelphia.

5.13 Lancaster County Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the modern-day seat of Lancaster (pronounced LANK-ester) County, is about eighty miles west of Philadelphia. As the Mason & Dixon (M&D) Wiki points out, the area is known for its concentration of Amish.¹ That the benches are mismatch’d may point to a (class?) divide between the Philadelphia LeSparks and the Lancaster ones, and, indeed, Lancaster will serve as a pivotal backcountry location in future episodes.

5.13–14 Chippendale Though I always think of Chris Farley, this refers to a chair with a wavy-patterned back, probably made or inspired by famed eighteenth-century furniture maker Thomas Chippendale. Second-Street suggests it was purchased or made on Philadelphia’s Second Street, still a popular commercial thoroughfare.

5.16 snug, dim tent A fort! This is the children’s playroom, after all.

5.17 War The Revolutionary one.

5.19–20 illusion of depth M&D is a frame narrative, a story within a story. The table replicates that fact, here on the first page, and makes a direct connection to the Pages of Books noted in the next line.

5.21 Mortises A hole in a piece of wood where a second piece can be attached or inserted. Common in IKEA furniture.

6.9 Christmastide … 1786 We’re in the interregnum between the end of the Revolutionary War and the creation and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitutional Convention will draw up the founding document in September 1787, just nine months from the date mentioned here, and that’s not coincidence. Pynchon loves subjunctive moments,² moments in history where possibilities remain open ended. The Christmas-tide of 1786 is one of those moments. The Constitution will create order, yes, but it will also institutionalize at least one of the nation’s great divides: that between free and slave states. This will become a major theme of the book. There may also be a slight contradiction here, as Christmastide refers to the twelve-day period between December 25 and January 5 (also known as Twelfth Night), and the opening describes the time as Advent, referring to the period twenty-eight days prior to December 25. It’s possible Pynchon is using Christmastide generically, or even emphasizing the calendar as a social construct, something else that will recur throughout the book.

6.9–10 bickering … Fragments May have had some modern-day resonance with 1997 readers, given the impeachment of Bill Clinton (who’s referenced directly at 10.32).

6.19–20 Northern Liberties … Germantown All areas of Philadelphia.

6.23–26 Madeira … Star Madeira is a type of fortified wine. The passage implies that the politics are chaotic (and thus wide open) enough that alcohol is being used as a coping mechanism. The final portion of the line features a double meaning on Advent, which it literally is, or might be, by the calendar. It is figuratively Advent in that the whole nation is in the waiting period preceding the adoption of the Constitution. This quote also contains the first reference to parallax (the way an object like the moon, for example, may appear to be in a different position depending on where an observer is situated), with its mention of the Distance to a Star. Physical position, knowing where one is in space, is an important theme in the novel, and to that end, this passage merges science and politics. Just as it’s difficult to precisely determine where an object is in space, it’s difficult to intuit where the country might go politically.

6.33 LeSpark The name is appropriate, given that the family’s money comes from munitions.

7.5 Herodotic Herodotus was a Greek historian known for including apocryphal or unverified accounts in his work. As the M&D Wiki points out, there are certainly similarities between Herodotus and the Rev in this regard, and perhaps connections to Pynchon himself as well.

7.11 Nasal Telegraph Tenebræ can smell the twins approaching. Makes sense, given what they’re carrying.

7.13 Saccharomanic Sugar obsessed.

7.16 Nunk Uncle. The twins are addressing the Rev.

7.19–21 Pitt and Pliny … Brother Pliny the Elder and Younger were Roman authors. Pitt the Elder and Younger each served as British prime minister. The Pliny reference is likely familiar to modern-day readers. Pitt, on the other hand, is contemporary to our story, with the Younger serving as prime minister at the moment this scene is taking place, and the Elder (a British secretary of state) often credited with the British military victories of 1759, the annus mirabilis (meaning wonderful/marvelous/miraculous year) that will feature prominently throughout Latitudes and Departures. Pitt’s namesake here may suggest an homage. See 564.18.

7.22–23 Gobbets … Jabot He’s licking drops of dessert from a decorative ruffle tied around his neck. That thing Austin Powers wears? It’s a jabot.

7.35 poor Mason The burial the Rev arrived too late for, back in October.

8.5 two Proprietorships The Mason-Dixon Line was drawn as a result of a property dispute between the Penn family (of Pennsylvania) and the Calvert family (of Maryland).

8.6 nullified The proprietorships may have been, but the line itself was not. It came to serve a much different purpose than initially thought, becoming the dividing line between slavery and freedom. That’s another major theme of the novel, as are unintended consequences and whether or not some grand conspiracy actually intends them.

8.14 shade Ghost/spirit. The passage inverts the idea of the dead haunting the living.

8.21–29 untrustworthy Remembrancer … Eye-lashes The Rev admits to being an unreliable narrator here, or maybe this is merely the kind of self-deprecation often used as a storytelling technique. Cherrycoke notes that while he pulled the description that opens this passage from his diary (Secret Relation), he would not necessarily phrase it that way in front of the twins (even though, of course, he just has). There’s a strange and, yes, creepy suggestion of flirtation between the Rev and Tenebræ as this passage ends.

8.30 Hanging Technically, it begins with a hypothetical description of a hanging (from Tyburn Tree, which will reappear periodically), as opposed to an actual one. So maybe the Rev’s doing some advertising here, providing a hook, if you will.

9.4 Wesley … Whitefield John Wesley and George Whitefield, two eighteenth-century Christian ministers who disagreed over the doctrine of predestination (a theme closely related to Pynchon’s frequent division of the world into the chosen, or elect, and the passed over, or preterite). They’re invoked here to suggest that the Rev’s resurrect[ion] into an entirely new Knowledge of the terms of being would have been more secular and would not have made as much of the involvement of the divine in human affairs as the major theological commentators of the day did. In short, this paragraph (and this opening episode as a whole) paints a worldly picture of the Rev, showing him as a theological outlier, an earthly man in parsonical disguise. There are also important similarities between the Rev and William Pynchon, Thomas Pynchon’s seventeenth-century ancestor. William Pynchon’s treatise The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, was (mis?)interpreted by colonial clergy as arguing for the possibility of everyday people obtaining grace through obedience and right living, thus contradicting predestination. The book was deemed heretical and burned en masse. A fictionalized version of William Pynchon appears in Gravity’s Rainbow, arguing more directly for the bestowal of grace on the preterite.

9.17–18 professional interest Ives is a lawyer (hence the Brief-bag).

9.26 Dick Turpin According to the M&D Wiki, a burglar, horse thief, and killer. The Rev is saying those crimes look like teenaged pranks compared against what he was accused of, the posting of anonymous messages about Crimes … committed by the Stronger against the Weaker.³

9.32 Assize An English court that set up and met temporarily at a specific location.

10.2 Ludgate Famous London prison. The Rev probably wasn’t there either.

10.4–13 name … reasons As Pynchon writes in Gravity’s Rainbow, The Man has a branch office in each of our brains.⁴ The Rev is a perpetual outlier and deemed insane. He can’t hide from the system. Can Mason and Dixon? We’ll have to see.

10.14 my Inclination Pynchon’s dropped the quotes. Cherrycoke’s presence as storyteller becomes more hidden or ambiguous from here on, and that will provide Pynchon with the opportunity to complicate his narrative and foreground questions of history and storytelling.

10.26 Bedlam Bethlehem Royal Hospital, a psychiatric facility in London. The word has since come to have other connotations.

10.33 do not inhale Readers in 1997 would have likely made the connection to Bill Clinton’s admission, in a 1992 interview, that he experimented with marijuana [while a Rhodes scholar in England] but didn’t like it, and … did not inhale.⁵

11.7 Jean Crapaud Translates to "Johnny Frog, British slang for Frenchman." Given the hostilities between France and England at the time, the idea here is that the ship’s plan to head east will be violently altered.

2

Through their letters, we meet Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. Between their correspondence, someone, presumably Cherrycoke, narrates an interaction the two had much deeper into their relationship, allowing the reader to glimpse the friendship that develops underneath the stilted professional nature of the letters.

12.5 Transit of Venus A rare astronomical event during which the shadow of Venus can be seen traveling across the sun. In 1639, observations of this phenomenon helped astronomers calculate the distance from Earth to the sun. In 1761, when these letters were written, the placement of observing astronomers in different parts of the world (to help calculate small changes induced by parallax) would help refine those calculations. Mason and Dixon are scheduled to be in Sumatra. Further Reading lists several sources that will explain the Transit and its significance more fully.

12.7 Bird … Emerson⁶ John Bird and William Emerson. Bird made instruments like telescopes. Emerson was a mathematician. Both were from County Durham, as is Dixon. The two are invoked here as Dixon’s professional references.

12.13 Needle Dixon’s referring (probably very singularly) to the compass (he’s a surveyor, more familiar with the earth than with the sky). But there is a double meaning here, especially for modern readers, involving heroin, and we’ll see Dixon drawn to opium later in the novel.

13.6 Astronomer Royal Within the British monarchy, the Astronomer Royal (AR) is in charge of celestial observation. As naval navigation was essential for maintaining and extending military power and for forwarding commercial and trade interests (and as that navigation depended on the stars), this was a prestigious post. At the time of these letters, it would have been occupied by James Bradley, successor to the more recognizable Edmund Halley. Nevil Maskelyne, who will assume the post in 1765, will also play an important role in the text.

13.18–19 Dollond … Achromatics Optician and businessman John Dollond did pioneering work on achromatic lenses, which were used in things like telescopes in order to reduce distortion and improve clarity in the viewed image.

13.20 Mr. Ellicott John Ellicott was a clockmaker known for his craftsmanship. It was difficult to keep time in the eighteenth century, especially aboard ship (there will be more on this as Latitudes and Departures progresses). Ellicott was known for making quality clocks.

13.20 Sector A type of compass made of two rulers joined by a hinge. Each ruler features numerical data and formulas that serve to help calculate distance and solve problems relating to proportion. The sector is an essential tool for a surveyor like Dixon.

13.26 y’r obdt. Svt. There are slight differences in how Mason and Dixon each employ this phrase, but note especially the capitalization. Dixon capitalizes Your (Y’r) but not servant (s’v’t). With Mason, it’s reversed. This difference might indicate a prestige or class gap between the two men, one that Mason is either replicating (by capitalizing the nouns referring to himself but not those referring to Dixon) or undermining (depending on how one reads the capitalization of Servant—is it to emphasize that Mason is the servant, or that Mason is in the servant role?). The rich ambiguity (and in such a small bit of text too) is typical of Pynchon.

3

Mason and Dixon’s first meeting seems to take place during Christmas-tide (between December 25, 1760, and January 5, 1761) in Portsmouth, though later references will undermine that specific timeline in a way that highlights the ambiguity around timekeeping as well as historical reconstruction.⁷ Mason and Dixon get off on awkward footing as they meet a talking dog, hang out with some hard-partying sailors, and get a dire warning from a fortune teller in a dimly lit bar. Throughout, we get a sense of their personalities, watch them (especially Mason) struggle with the tension between scientific rationality and more mystical ways of knowing/belief, and, finally, see them off to Sumatra aboard the Rev’s Seahorse in January 1761.

14.1–2 I … meeting We’re back in the Rev’s voice as the section opens, and again the nested nature of the narrative is made clear. We’re not getting the tale of Mason and Dixon meeting. We’re getting Mason’s and Dixon’s recollection of the moment through a third party. The remainder of the opening paragraph equivocates further about the accuracy of the Rev’s notes, on which the account of the title pair’s initial meeting is presumably based.

15.4 Wapping … Tyburn Both London locations known for public executions by hanging. Wapping is also a naval district. Lots of sailors about.

15.23 rahde the eeahr at Taahburn Mason parodies the manner of speech in Dixon’s hometown, and maybe their bumpkin desires too. A modern equivalent might be something like this: Didja ketch one of them Broadway shows out there in the big city?⁸

15.24 Hill in Greenwich The Royal Observatory, where Mason spends most of his time. As the passage progresses, Dixon notes Mason’s social awkwardness, fakes a laugh, and then tries to set [the pair] at Ease with a joke of his own.

15.35 Bath British resort town known for its Roman-era baths. A trendy city in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Jane Austen lived there in the early 1800s.

16.8 heard it Dixon, having already made a spectacle, abandons his joke. The punch line must have either involved sailors (given Mason’s line "Sailors are staring"), been too vulgar, or both. Either way, this initial meeting is a mess of awkwardness, something out of the U.S. version of The Office.

16.14 forms of You Dixon’s trying to show respect, maybe in a bumbling way, maybe too eagerly. There’s a great deal of Uncertainty as to how the power may come to be sorted out betwixt our title pair here.

17.1–6 Surveyors … Living See note at 9.26. This is a historical moment where communal lands are being redistributed for corporate production and notions of ownership are being imprinted upon the natural world. Pynchon’s skepticism about real estate (and its impacts on the environment and culture) will be a major theme of the novel. That Dixon’s done this work as a surveyor goes in our reasons-for-complicity column. The jacket copy to the hardcover Henry Holt edition (Pynchon wrote jacket copy for Against the Day—did he do so here as well?) calls Mason and Dixon [u]nreflectively entangled in crimes of demarcation, which is an important phrase. On the other hand, Dixon’s also chosen to give up surveying work, at least temporarily, in this paragraph. Again, it’s layered. Complicated.

17.8 Ha-Has In landscape design, a ha-ha is a slope leading down into a wall, often a retaining wall. The goal is to make it harder to get around the wall while also maintaining the view from the top.

17.9–10 Lord Lambton The lord of Lambton Castle in County Durham. An Anthony Lambton was a Conservative member of Parliament forced to resign in 1973 after a scandal involving prostitutes and marijuana. Lord Lambton falling into a ha-ha (which resembles both bruhaha [slang for scandal] and hoo-ha [slang for vagina]) is a typical (and typically byzantine) Pynchon pun. Pynchon’s inserting an esoteric joke about British political sex scandals into a conversation about eighteenth-century surveying practices.

17.12–13 Laplace … Kepler, Aristarchus All astronomers. Pierre-Simone, Marquis de Laplace (known for being one of the first to propose the existence of black holes), is mentioned anachronistically. (However, whether the anachronism is Pynchon’s or the Rev’s is an open question— as Hinds writes, Pynchon’s use of anachronism is an artistic choice, one bringing past and present together, position[ing] the narrative at the intersection of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, and reminding us that Cherrycoke is also mapping 1786 details onto 1760 events.⁹ Born in March 1749, the marquis would have been eleven years old at the time of this conversation. Dixon wouldn’t have heard of him.

17.21 Craters … Moon Mason and Nevil Maskelyne both have moon craters named after them.

18.7 Jack Sprat Jack Sprat could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean. Mason is calling it a happy thing that he prefers wine (grape) while Dixon prefers beer / distilled spirits (grain). They won’t be dipping into each other’s supply.

18.16 last chance They’ll be aboard ship for months.

18.22–23 Murmur of Expectancy A gorgeous paragraph. Candles are coming out, the light is dimming and flickering, and Christmas is on the way. Is this expectancy destined for anticlimax? Is it ominous? Does it refer to the future of the Mason and Dixon partnership? There are similarities between this murmur and the one occurring with our Reverend Cherrycoke, who is giving us this very description from his own 1786 Christmastide in Philadelphia.

18.26 Norfolk Terrier Or maybe that murmur is just for the Learnèd English Dog, who immediately breaks into song.

19.13 Mesmerites Franz Mesmer is best known for the phrase animal magnetism, and Mason is experiencing the literal version of that quality here. The name’s also associated with hypnosis.

19.15 recognizes That is, allows Mason to speak. Calls on him. Is it also possible the dog recognizes Mason from a previous meeting? Your call.

19.30 his Joint I don’t know what Dixon is ingenuously waving, but joint is British slang for a large piece of meat. That would make sense given the discussion of Mason’s mutton chop, but there is a double entendre, joint sometimes also referring to penis.

19.30 Pistoles Coins.

19.36 Metempsychosis Shows up in novels like Ulysses and Infinite Jest, too, and has to do with reincarnation, with the soul moving to a different life after death. Mason’s interest in the dog complicates his character. He’s a man of science, yes, but he also needs to believe in the spiritual.

20.19 Dressing-Room’s close by One thing of note with regard to this section is how swiftly Pynchon switches from sincerity to humor and back. This section of dialogue comes on the heels of a paragraph about grief, shadowed cardplayers, and sailors awaiting their first battle while puking in a gutter, and yet it’s as much comic banter as comic banter gets.

20.25 trice Very quickly. And note that the dog does appear to be in with the horses after all, given the reference to the stables below.

20.36 Sphinx Creature of miracle that was part woman, part lion, and part bird. Known to devour travelers who failed to answer a riddle, so, yeah, that would certainly cause apprehension. At stake is how much [t]his dog should scare these two.

21.7 Seahorse Recall this is the Rev’s ship. Fender-Belly Bodine will stand out to Pynchon readers due to Pig Bodine’s appearances in V., Gravity’s Rainbow, and the short story Low-Lands. A historical aside: the world-famous Admiral Horatio Nelson served aboard the Seahorse in the 1770s.

21.19 Cooch Girls Aside from its slang meaning, cooch can also refer to a dance performed by women that was once common in carnivals and fairs and marked by a sinuous and often suggestive twisting and shaking of the torso and limbs.¹⁰ A Cooch Girl, then, would be a woman performing this particular dance.

21.30 Fops, Macaronis, or Lunarians Fops and macaronis were people very (even excessively) concerned with fashionable dress and speech. Lunarian has multiple connotations. M&D Wiki claims it refers to astronomers who felt that the solution to the Longitude prize lay in the development of lunar tables describing the moons of Jupiter, and Jupiter’s moons were thought of as one possible solution to the longitude problem. Still, the most apt definitions appear to refer to experts in lunar astronomy, or perhaps to people who believed in using lunar tables for Earth’s moon in order to navigate at sea. Alternative definitions involve people who live on the moon or believe in moon men. Whatever the case, this is an odd gathering.

21.33–34 Hostlers … Glim-jacks … light Hostlers tended horses. Glim-jacks were sort of like crossing guards, walking around with candles and guiding people through the streets at night. Hence, they’re looking to cast any light both literally and in the idiomatic sense.

22.4 L.E.D. blinks LEDs (light-emitting diodes) are often used in television displays. The use of this acronym with blink is another pun.

22.8 Mu Japanese word sometimes translated as simply no, but also interpreted as nothingness, as the empty state between yes and no, which has important spiritual connotations in Buddhism. The same Zen koan appears in Against the Day, where a character confound[s] a Zennist monastery by answering … ‘Yes, obviously—was there anything else?’¹¹ Reading Pynchon is a lot like meditating on this kind of koan. There are moments when the plain meaning of the language will cover more nuanced, layered interpretations, and then there are moments when our expectations for complexity will be undermined by the simplest joke, the barest declaration of emotion, or the most direct, unadorned expression of beauty.

22.16–17 Provisions for Survival This phrase, along with the little history lesson the LED gives below, goes a long way in describing the dilemma of post-Enlightenment existence. The advancement of science has moved society away from spiritual/religious ideas about humanity and human behavior and toward mechanistic ones. This creates massive technological and economic progress, but it also enables the existence of more devastating weapons systems (see Gravity’s Rainbow), and it allows for technologically advanced cultures to destroy more naturalistic ones (and justify said destruction with stories about civilization). Mason, in this moment, is caught in between. He’s unable to fully believe in the afterlife (see his need to empirically validate his hope by talking with the LED), but he’s also unable to accept the notion of death as the end. Aware that he’ll never know the answer with certainty, Mason’s left struggling, hoping there are enough provisions to enable some kind of survival (just as the dogs in the parable must go on day by day, assured of no permanent rest, struggling to delay the blades of [their] Masters one more night).

22.33–34 Macaroni Italian Style … Fop Fricasée Pynchon’s mention of macaronis and fops pays off in another pun, this time a sort of how would you like it if … ? from the LED.

23.1 Hanger The Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition is a small sword formerly used by seamen.¹² But yes, double entendre.

23.6 Hydrophobia Rabies.

23.10 fathom Six feet. A safe distance. Far enough apart to prevent the spread of disease.

23.16–17 British … me Implies that other kinds of dogs are owned, but not British ones. The passage also foreshadows the role of slavery in the novel and suggests that even talking dogs aren’t exempt from colonialism and imperialism. Maybe this is something else they’ve learned to copy from their human masters. See also 65.29.

24.17 Portsmouth Polls Poll is short for Polly.

24.26 Welsh Main A cockfighting tournament.

25.2 Gamester Gambler.

25.6 Duetto of Viol Duetto is basically Italian for duet. A viol is a musical instrument.

25.8 Fulhams M&D Wiki identifies this as loaded dice and contains a useful reference.

25.8–9 Bitter … Three-Threads Types of beer.

25.10–11 movements … Intent Ominous phrasing. It suggests that the further back one goes, the more one wants to do something specific (and maybe sinister).

25.14 Euphroe A kind of wooden block.

25.18 Rebekah … died Rebekah Mason died February 13, 1759. Dixon’s suspicion that Mason has lost someone close is confirmed here, and it lends motivation to Mason’s obsession with reincarnation and the LED.

26.1 Ort Scrap of food. The LED doesn’t want it. It’s not the package he’s looking for, which begs the question of what, exactly, he’s seeking.

26.5 Boatswain’s Pipe A whistle used on ships. A way of saying, Mean anything to you?

26.7 Collier Boat used to ship coal.

26.8 Woolwich … Examiners Woolwich is located within the Royal Borough of Greenwich (where the Royal Observatory is located), so presumably Dixon is answering as he might have when being interviewed for this task.

26.10–13 Captain Smith … afford Captain Smith is the captain of the Seahorse. In other words, you’re doomed.

26.17 Scryeress Prophetess. Dixon’s being sarcastic. Seeing he’s without family is no kind of psychic feat, so this is like the eighteenth-century version of no shit, Sherlock.

26.19 shockingly young There’s quite a bit of fakery happening in this scene, from Mason and Dixon trying to feel each other out to the LED’s bluff about rabies to laughter more and less feigned at 25.5. Yet Dark Hepsie’s prophecy will show itself to be alarmingly accurate. The Rev has already said as much, with his allusion to Jean Crapaud at 11.7. This returns us to the Age of Reason theme. Is science allowing us all to see people like Dark Hepsie for the frauds that they are, or making us blind to the truths they do reveal? How much is faith in Hepsie part of the Rev’s point of view, and how much is it the argument of the text writ large?

26.28 Half a Crown About twenty dollars, according to the M&D Wiki, and it checks out.

27.1 Geordie Refers to an inhabitant of Tyneside, northeast England. Dixon’s mother, Mary Hunter, was a Geordie from Newcastle, which may be why Dixon’s approving here. Mason’s frugality reminds him of home.

27.8 Year of Marvels 1759 is known as the annus mirabilis due to a series of British victories in Europe (in the Seven Years’ War) and North America (in the French and Indian War). There are two very thorough books on the mid-eighteenth-century military conflicts involving Britain and France linked in Further Reading. One of them, David Hackett Fisher’s Champlain’s Dream, lays out the case that Samuel de Champlain (often called the Father of New France, a series of colonial settlements running from Quebec to Louisiana) was committed to an idealistic vision involving Europeans and Native peoples living harmoniously together in the New World. The implication of Fisher’s portrait of Champlain is that French victory in the French and Indian War would have been a lot better for Native Americans than what transpired—British victory, subsequent colonial revolution, and then Manifest Destiny. If true, that gives miraculous year an ironic tinge throughout M&D—miraculous for whom? Certainly not the Natives. The French and Indian War as a hinge point in history, and the tension between ruling powers, the questions about colonizers and the colonized, that’s all very Pynchonian and very in keeping with M&D as a whole.

27.8–16 Hawke … Conflans … inexhaustible A long, dense passage, but its substance is something like this: Since the 1759 defeat of the French fleet by the British at the Battle of Quiberon Bay (part of the Seven Years’ War), the French have lacked energy. A few Captains of smaller ships, though, have lashed out, looking for British targets. Hepsie is telling Mason and Dixon that these French ships are coming for them should they sail out on the Seahorse. Of note: Hawke and Conflans are real historical figures, and the Battle of Quiberon Bay is a real historical event. Mortmain (referring to the perpetual ownership of real estate by a corporation or institution, or else a phrase like dead hand), Le Chisel (as compared to LeSpark), and St.-Foux (seems to derive from fous, meaning zealous/mad/crazy) are all fictional. To mix real history and fiction is typical of Pynchon, and it calls attention to that question of who and what can really be trusted.

27.27–29 Ecole … Kiddean Chair Ecole is French for school, so it seems St.-Foux is a big deal at the Pirate School (with his Chair named for William Kidd, a notorious pirate, hanged in London in 1701). Toulon’s a city on the Mediterranean coast of France.

28.7–8 Ramillies … Pa-oli’s Revolt The Ramillies sank at Bolt Trail (off the southeastern coast of England) in February 1760, and Paoli’s Revolt references Pasqual Paoli, who led the Corsican resistance to French rule in the latter part of the eighteenth century. His mention here is anachronistic (see 17.12–13), as the French conquest of Corsica didn’t take place until 1768. The song here is basically a catalog of Hepsie’s prophetic successes, perhaps even successes that are yet to come in the moment, though well known to our narrator.

28.19 Stern-chase One boat chasing another, but not at high speed. In TV parlance, stern chase refers to a plot in which the protagonist is constantly on the run from a pursuer and possibly never caught, as appears to happen in Bodine’s subsequent story.

28.33 She and Hepsie Who are perhaps doubles? A couple? A team? Perhaps they parallel Mason and Dixon in their own way. Does this imply that we should be skeptical regarding her praise of Hepsie? Again, as throughout the book, there are many ambiguities and possible agendas. When reading Pynchon, get comfortable with the land of both/and.

4

One of the few things we know about Pynchon’s life is that he served two years in the navy in the late 1950s. Naval terminology occurs throughout his books, but this episode puts it center stage. After an opening where the assembled audience (which now includes Wade LeSpark’s nephew Ethelmer) comments on the Rev’s profession of piety during his experience with battle, we get the story of the Seahorse and its attempt to leave for Sumatra. There’s an initial dispute about finances and some question about where the ship will sail. Will it still go to Sumatra, even though the French have captured territory there? Captain Smith believes the Cape of Good Hope will be its actual destination, but we never get confirmation of that. In fact, the Seahorse is attacked by l’Grand, a French vessel captained by St.-Foux, before it even gets away from the English Channel— just as Hepsie’s prophecy indicated. The attack is bloody and terrifying, and Mason and Dixon (and the Rev) wait it out belowdecks, coming face-to-face with death before the fight suddenly stops. At the end of the episode, Mason and Dixon drink together, throwing bottles into the sea and speculating about whether a mysterious they (another feature of Pynchon’s work) knew the Seahorse would be attacked.

30.2 Epictetus Greek Stoic philosopher who argued that, death being the natural way of the world, people should accept it, even do their part to embrace it.

30.9 Seahorse Really was attacked by a French vessel en route to Sumatra, though Pynchon’s filled in a lot details (see 262.29). Pynchon’s mixing of history and invention (or perhaps they’re one and the same) is clear in this episode.

30.14–15 College … Jerseys Must be either Princeton (founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey) or Rutgers (chartered in 1766 and called Queen’s College). Princeton’s a better guess given that it was secularizing in the 1780s, whereas Rutgers remained closely tied to the Dutch Reformed Church. See Ethelmer’s comments on religion below.

30.19 pollicates Points his thumb at. Ethelmer’s making fun of the Rev’s expressed piety (or hypocrisy—Ethelmer more tentatively accuses Mr. LeSpark too), which itself might be a show put on for the sake of the twins, part of his parsonical disguise. Ethelmer seems to be showing off for Tenebræ.

31.3–21 LeSpark … departed The passage continues the theme of stories and reality, events as lived and events as told. Wade LeSpark is an arms dealer, part of the early military-industrial complex (a favored Pynchon theme, especially in Gravity’s Rainbow). He’s caused way more death and distress than has been visited on him in life, and the family understands this and tells tales about it. Ethelmer himself receives financial support from his uncle, but he notes that the reality of his uncle’s life doesn’t quite match the tales told about it. The closing line, about Ethelmer’s enjoyably departed innocence, might suggest mischief, a kind of enlightenment about the family’s money, or the kind of hip cynicism that’s easy to revel in. That Ethelmer appears innocent to the young women but isn’t is another instance of this whole opening’s main theme.¹³

31.22 wants whah Captain James Smith was the historical captain of the HMS Seahorse from October 1758 until January 1761. This is a conversation that rapidly shifts around, but its outline is that Smith (really, actually, historically) wrote a letter asking that Mason and Dixon (or the Royal Society [RS]) pay for their board while traveling on the Seahorse. Nobody’s very happy about this. It’s a bit like thinking you’re on full scholarship and then being asked to pay a large additional bill for your food, housing, and books. Perhaps that sounds familiar? The nested nature of the conversation (the Rev